I applied for a position as an Android developer. There were four rounds: * Round 1: Call with Recruiter (20 minutes) This was a very basic “get to know you” call, discussing expectations, company culture, experience and the position itself. The recruiter was very friendly and open for questions. * Round 2: Live Coding Challenge (1:30h) For the second round, I was given a live coding challenge. They sent me an Android Studio project a few days before the interview to let me make sure it runs fine while sharing my screen during the interview itself. The project was based on Jetpack Compose and Clean Architecture (i.e. Data + Domain + UI, split into Gradle modules per feature). It relied on Dagger for dependency injection - practical knowledge of Dagger was definitely required to succeed in the challenge. I was allowed to use Google during the challenge, which I didn’t make use of. The challenge itself went in somewhat unexpected ways, due to which I couldn’t present my skills accurately. I was told that it was going to be like pair programming. In my experience, it was actually more like an exam, as there was very little response from the two interviewers whenever I tried starting a constructive discussion. Whenever I was given a task/problem, I outlined several approaches and wanted to discuss with them which approach to take, then implement that. But whenever I tried to discuss, they just told me to do what I believe is best. And yet, they looked for very specific solutions. There were several occasions where I was going with the approach I believe was best, and only then they told me to do it another way without mentioning why or which other approach they’d prefer. Additionally, one solution they wanted to see wasn’t feasible in the codebase without major changes. They realized this rather late and then asked me to skip the rest of that task. After the coding was over, we proceeded to a technical Q&A. The interviewers were looking for specific terms (Clean Architecture, MVVM, MVP, …) in response to questions that were a bit vague. I was also asked to explain testing approaches. The chat we had after the challenge was nice though, they were very friendly. * Round 3: Behavioral (1h) This round went great. I got many questions about agile processes, challenges and how to overcome them, for example: "You want everyone to migrate from technology A to technology B. How do you handle that?" or "How do you handle it when a proposal of yours is rejected?" Round 4: Meet the Team (1h) This round also went great. It felt a bit like chatting with people you’ve just met at a party. I learned about what they’re doing and what I’d work on. The team was very open and friendly. * Offer A couple of days after the last round, I was sent an informal offer via email. Unfortunately the offered compensation was significantly lower than what I stated as my expectation in the first round and could only barely compete with unionized industrial salaries. Negotiation for roughly 5 % more was turned down, which I found surprising. I decided to decline the offer. Sidenotes - Scheduled meetings were often at inconvenient times in the middle of the day. While not a problem for people working from home, this is not ideal for people working in offices. It would have been much easier had the meetings been scheduled in the morning or afternoon as it would allow people to just come to work late or leave early. - I was asked to reschedule meetings several times, even after I had been given confirmation already.
